A Song of Dark and Light
by Choonz
Summary: The lay of the doomed love of Eöl the Dark for Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, the White Lady of the Noldo. As told by an unrepentant Eöl to Námo, Keeper of the Houses of the Dead when called to give account for his deeds and the grief occasioned by them.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Water of Quickening**

I am Eöl Dubh, son of none. Of kin, forsaken. Those I held in esteem are fled – to Arda's ends or Mandos' halls. So what need have I to bear name? To hear it given voice?

There is such a weight in words, which fashion our troth, one to another. Better never to utter them than speak, and find promise or pledge returned as falsehood. To be forsworn, or to forswear another – it is better to end than live thus.

Nay, I would not hear my name in another's mouth now, and indeed it has been long since I have heard another voice. Nor am I fain to speak long of my days. Weary am I of mine own life: unwilling to give breath to bear recollection.

Still less am I inclined to open unto you. You press upon me with demand – master unto bondsman, demanding that I render faithful accounting of my stewardship, even of mine own life. You threaten that if I will not give answer in my pride, or if my truth does appal you, that I will be extinguished, and come to naught. By what right?!

I am a free being, and no man's thrall! I will not suffer binding or chains. I am wont to hold my tongue, to husband it behind my teeth like a bright blade behind a shield of hewn linden wood. Do with me as you will – if you find might as right, and you possess the strength – and find that still I defy you. Seek to crush my head, and I will rise and bite you at the heel!

You can never own me.

Indeed, it seems to me – am I wrong? – that Eru Illúvatar made me thus. That I entered the shield of this Middle-Earth, Endor, a creature fully realised. Blithely I came in, my spirit a bared blade, that _fëa_ sheathed only in a green kirtle of simple dignity. Strip sword from scabbard, then – and see how she bites!

For I am Eöl the Dark, and I repay, kind for kind. Love for love, and blow for blow. Friendship with amity, treachery with death.

* * *

Upon this burden you lay your charge. You say I bear a son's duty – to Eru Illúvatar above all, the unmoved mover, the Power recessed behind the world and the far firmament, He that made me – and to Manwë Súlimo, Regent of Arda in His name, chief and king of the Vala, those mighty beings who indwell its realm and have wrought their will upon it, whose illimitable spirits are housed within and constrained by its natural laws.

And in this you speak fairly. For I, too, have raised a son, Maeglin of the Discerning Eye, and loved him – even as I failed him and he, me. My anger against him is a heated brand but newly quenched in brine – a _seax_ cold but sharp and keen for hard use, even now. Yet I deem my fault to be the greater. For was I not to guide him, and lead him and set his path before him?

I failed him, my twilight child, to my despite and his. Yet I _tried_. I gave of what I had in full measure – little enough though _that_ proved to be, for all that I know the working of wood and wrought iron! What of Eru? What did _he_ for me, save sire me upon the shoreline? I know not His face – nor had I earthly Father nor Mother to serve in His stead.

He made of me a bastard – as he has with all the first-kindled of our Quenya race. Most of us have learned to live with that shame in the interminable years that followed hard after. It is well that He gave us surpassingly long lives. We, who are Firstborn, have taught ourselves to cloak it well before those other races who followed after – the unlovely Naugrim, and brief-fleeting Edain.

They cannot know how our pride burns behind our haughty bearing, our heritage and heirlooms. Pride that comes from shame – the worst kind, I know right well! We are a distaff line from that Seed which sowed the stars, and in our secret hearts, we resent it yet. Thus, we Firstborn are thralls to honour – word-wounds returned in stern blows!

Most cling to Eru in worship, and in his lieu, to the godlings he sends out amongst us as apostles to shape and guide us, both Vala and Maia. Most, but not all. And I do not number amongst these – lack-wits and cravens, I deem them: one or the other!

Still my heart accuses me.

So be it! I will render a son's accounting and own my shame in full measure. I will speak, and have done. I will not spare myself in the telling – the truth as I know it – nor will I seek to set aside my hurts to spare the seeming-keen feelings of that One who has never spared mine!

I expect no answer from on high – neither from my absent Father, nor from His emissaries. I care not. Doom in full measure I shall surely find – I have sought by flame and fire and striving in secret places to cauterize my heart against my sin, but some tender part yet remains, and that seared flesh still demands some savage justice to be meted unto me for my appalling crimes.

This is my truth.

* * *

Cold was new-wrought Candíl, north-yearning star, when first I awakened. Candíl and Luiníl, Nénar and Lumbar, amber Alcarinquë and red-threatening Elemmíre – by fair Tintallë kindled, even as I drew my first breath and rose from the salt-mere of Cuiviérnen. Heedless to aught else about me but that first, candid flame – a fair white hand reaching out to me across gulf unknowable.

Cuiviérnen, Water of Quickening! Cuiviérnen, where lofty Illuín tumbled down into the bay of Helcar, was where my eyes first sought the sky in frankness. For I knew no shame then – only awe, and I thought I knew what love might be, with the white salt sharp-keen upon my lips like the tracks of tears, where beyond the ocean broke and roared:

To see beauty from afar and seek it out. To know its form and dimensions, and own them pleasing to the eye, and balm to the heart. Yet it seemed to me even then that love is yearning. Restless. Its object forever from reach. A thing lost in the finding of it – lucent reflection caught in some limpid tarn, a figment fragmented by your questing fingers into a susurrus. Dark and light in plainsong, causing the beholding eye to well with its unseemly glare.

Love can never be owned – not even when love's object is clasped acurve in your arms, her slumber light as a drowsing cat, drawn in upon herself. You are heat and warmth – little more to her than the pallet she lies upon. That is her fascination – and you will ache for it.

This knowledge, nascent as I bent my gaze upon Varda's crown, and I felt the first-pang of a long grief awakened then, looking upon light.

For Light, ever-young, knows not time's passing. All made things bend to her glory, even the Void's vastness, his hungering wastes defined by the want of that Imperishable Flame. Time and space itself curling under that finessing first-flame like a fall leaf, cast upon the forge-fire. So Mairon, Maiar of Aulë, taught me of his kenning. Annatar, _Giver of Gifts_ , that after was hight Gorthaur, _the Cruel_ , and Sauron, by which is be best known in the songs of Men. I had instruction – before such time as I learned there are things better not to know.

The Lover is void. Enthralled. He has nothing in his gift but an empty ache. Time lays heavy upon his slumpen shoulders. It darkens first his eyes, then his mind – entering into the soul by those argent gates, once-fair, that tarnish and are cast down by that most rampant of foes – a man once befriended. And the light he covets can never reach his eye: which is Despair. His gaze at last turns from the rent heavens, forgoing sight in his anguish, as if he would rather rake out his own eyes.

I have lived long, even as we Quendi reckon such things. I came in with the First Twilight, my promise as bright even as those Firstcomers who leavened the sky, falling to earth from the illimitable realms. The Ainur – Valar and Maiar – those smiling faces who never die. Who came to grow, heal and tend – and remained to raze and rule in cruel dominion.

The long years armoured me – a brynie of steel rings, intricate as a smith's puzzle-piece, each link so cunningly worked none can tell where two become one. The whole, a hooded hauberk so tight-knit none can enter in, neither spear nor sword, even that axe well-wielded that is the despite of many a strong man. Proof against all men, and all weapons – save one:

A son, forged on mine own hearth, and the woman that bore him. A youth, tempered keen and fell – a bright, bitter blade to go through harnesses – and his mother, a seasonless flower, like _uilos_ , the Evermind, whose white blossoms quicken once and for all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Twilight-Born**

We sprang up, clean of limb, lissom, from the foaming waste that lay leaguer under Illuín. The nascent blue flame of Helluin was in our eyes, that imperishable flame. That frigid light is a false promise, I am assured, of eternal youth – young and hale indeed were the Valraukarí, of a time, but it is their wyrd to wax into choleric red senescence, before they draw down upon themselves in a gnawing of heart to dwindle and diminish into that dark which knows no ending. Even the fell-faced heralds amongst their kindred – Tilion the Huntsman, and Arien, Heart of Flame, and the lucent honour-blades they bear – Isil, the Sheen, and Anar, Fire-Golden.

So too with the hearts of the Twilight-born, brought forth under the light of the Trees. We sicken not, unless it is in spirit, and we are not quenched, unless we are struck down. But we are not imperishable, and the years mar us.

* * *

Cuiviérnen, the Waters of Awakening! The Waters of a Thousand Points, we called them also for the stars above, Varda-kindled, and the Brackish Mere. A thousand names we bestowed upon them – a thousand too many for that liminal place, tear-bitter as those waters proved to be.

It has gone now, that seeming-strong shield – Illuín, together with the foothills of the Orocarni, whose walls of fastness hemmed us about. Passed down unto flame through the mortal round. Overthrown by those Ruinous Powers, as one marked for destruction. For high above gleamed the Valacirca, that two-edged Scythe of the Valar, of seven mighty stars. A burnished glaive hard-swung against all perishable things, auguring ever War.

A rumour of wrath overtaken. The Dark Foe of the World striding South to battle, His helm cresting like a mountain of malice. It was His feet, shod with speed and anger, that brought down that high place in his passing. The sharp-scraped flank of Illuín, He cast down into the bay below in his wake, and such was His unutterable haste, He knew not, though the doing of it would have brought delight to His black heart.

Thus perished the Waters of Awakening. That lidless eye gazing frankly upon the Heavens in hope, forever closed. Vanished beyond the kenning of Elves and Men, for at that time, we knew not the art of cartography. Even then, it would have surely proved a great labour, with rugose Arda so seeming-permanent a torpid winter bear, wont to stir and growl and cast from her that snowy throw, before bedding down once again, dreaming of better things.

I am a rough young cub. A son that outlived his mother's passing, her great strength taken unawares. His, to avenge what he can – his rough red tongue set to purpose, lapping up black blood.

* * *

It seems to me we came forth with lore in mind and the law engraved upon our hearts, knowing many things without the telling – though those things were indeed new to us, they surprised us not, each allotted crafts or skill according to his measure.

We found a need – of raiment, of food, of shelter – and devised means to meet it, in craft, and learned great joy – in our growth as much as our sufficiency. At first, we bedded down in the bracken, like tawny mountain hares. We were cold, but our bodies were hardy, and learnt endurance, and we discovered warmth through each other – man and woman lying down together.

It was then I had Nîn, daughter of none, and she me – but not to wife. Nîn she named herself, _Thrush_ , and she was brisk. Burbling like a sporting young stream, clear and sweet, tumbling from mountain-head, brimming up for the sheer joy in it. A happy bastard, such was Nîn Nínithèl – though she outlived her joy.

Nínithèl she was, _Fatherless,_ and Gladwúr, which is _Glad-Hearted_ , named true, for such was her joy, she recked neither snows nor cold. Like a dappled faun, she was wont to spring upon the sheer flanks of Illuín, the Shepherd-Mount that kept the black North-wind from our backs, and down unto the untenanted dales beyond, green-girded, secret.

Light-foot, she was impatient even of her own passing – so much to see, and so little time! I begrudged her going out, sharp-footed, in fear that she would surely discover some wonder beyond greater than my affections, and return to me not.

I did not know, of course, that she already had. It was only that her heart was so great, she bore enough love for me and for many others. Churlish it would be to begrudge her that – but I did. Yet she loved me – and better, I trow, than I knew, or could return. For she ever brought back tokens of her joy to me, many bright wonders for me to exclaim over. And thus she kindled lore within me, that secret fire and flame.

Seemly was she, and clean of limb, curved sweetly to meet me. Her embrace was a thing of dimpling cheeks. A mystery of mischief, tangled limbs and hair. Then she would be gone, stepping from the round of my arms without regret.

* * *

With Nîn gone, I was restless. I began to covet her, in her absence, and in my art fashioned her many things to ensnare her eye and tangle her restless fingers. Or so I saw it.

I saw her go down to the rock-pools, where those new-found rocks, so recently split by Aulë's mighty mell, bladed keen. Watched her skip-step deft through those secluded pools, plucking limpets and mussels from the rocks to eat them raw, singing as she went, returning to me to exclaim over some trifle, a cut to heel or palm.

 _In your water garden_

 _you corralled water-crabs_

 _brought shells to me_

 _discreetly_

 _for my inspection._

 _I intently, seriously_

 _framed this picture_

 _in mind's eye_

 _for when you feel the loss_

 _of four years_

 _more than the sharp sand_

 _and pebbles between your toes._

* * *

 _You, laughing, sprinkled_

 _my head with grit_

 _in benediction_

 _I ruffled your dun hair_

 _You were home._

* * *

 _Still carry the bruise_

 _from where you bundled into me_

 _wilding one!_

* * *

 _I would write you down_

 _to keep_

 _and hold against my ribs_

 _to guard against dark days –_

 _and I must not lose_

 _what you import_

 _your eyes the window to your soul_

 _and we press into the tideline stones_

 _and all the violence of that sea_

 _I shield you from as you clasp onto me._

* * *

 _We are small but safe out here_

 _my friend. I know you understand_

 _and all my faults_

 _are dragged away_

 _disappear into dark ocean_

 _the aurora broils over_

 _and that roiling emerald iris_

 _gives way to black_

 _in the tang of sea-spray._

* * *

 _And we talk so earnestly_

 _and instead of being mocked_

 _by that billowing fastness_

 _we speak without artifice_

 _into it_

 _like children. Salt-caked_

 _in a place vast as death_

 _we depend upon love._

* * *

 _This wake –_

 _we die to self_

 _with wide eyes –_

 _my breath is yours_

 _and we can smile, laugh or cry_

 _without denial_

 _and doubtless will_

 _with guileless hearts._

And I grew jealous of her little hurts and sought to prevent them.

It was then I went into the westering wood, youngling with limber sycamore saplings, and wrested them from the earth, their late leaves chiming, and wove together a withy from their sap-lithe stems, to trap fish.

I deemed that she would be pleased with my art, and the small silver bream I caught to eat, in their brynies of scale mail, beneath, their ripe flesh raw. But she was not, grieving for fallen trees over fish, and by sign and gesture made me take her, heavy of heart, to that place where I had made my labour.

It was then I first knew shame, seeing the twisted stumps that my rough hands had rived from life to death. Her anger appalled me, and made me afraid, and she withdrew from me a time and went to others instead, and I learned to hate them. Yet she returned, and we had much joy of each other, and were reconciled.

From those first innocent couplings, we learned much of our nature, shaping sounds to comfort and to tend and express our wants. Our chaffing – carefree as the wild finches that whorled overhead, bright in the round as the stars circling the firmament – named our people, Quendi, and that has been the name of our fair folk, and our tongue ever since.

* * *

Spring brought forth new life and children – for some amongst us, though not for me and many – and our wonder was tempered. _We_ could be children no longer, with children of our own. And we saw swiftly that against our long lives balanced a want of fecundity, it being no part of Eru's great design that we burden Arda with a multitude. And there were some, even then, who augured a race yet to come, who would outstrip us. These were never intended to be our realms. We would be stewards only. Thus, our joy in the flesh was diminished and never rekindled to the same degree.

We learned of death – by misadventure, by strife. The land bruised our bodies, and the wild animals we hunted – running after, fleet of foot, until in exhaustion they turned at bay – would do us harm, if they could. We were simple of heart, and all our hurts surprised us.

The imperative of Death and dependants knit us together – first family, and then clan. The burden of supporting life lead first to cohesion, then contention, and from it, kindred – peoples, defined one from another by difference in blood and dwelling-place. But there was no slaying of kin by kin, Elf by Elf. Such fell deeds came after. The moral law was engraved upon our hearts at that time, and we would not gainsay it.

But there was discord. Three nations emerged from one. Foremost, the Vanyar fair, keen and clear of eye. A quiet people, much given to wonder and indwelling, eyes ever cast beyond the horizon.

The second people are the Noldor, great in arms and daring. Dark of mind, their bodies given to a rude strength and their spirits sullen and perilous. They are the Gonhirrim, hewers of stone, builders of fastnesses and high towers. Wont to lay down a broad causeway of stone flags one year – that the next a sharp-footed host can invade their neighbour's lands, sword in hand, the tongued flame prepared before them. For they are a prideful race, their wrath a well-banked charcoal-bed, longing best to leap forth in sudden flame to scar and scald!

Last of the three are my people, the Teleri. We were the greater part of that host, land-wedded, the streams of Endor commingled in our blood. Our wyrd, the skeins of Life and Fate, are bound to the realms of Middle-Earth, for good or for ill, and there is only great sorrow to be found for those who have gone out from amongst us into the uttermost West. Sorrow, too for those un-sundered, who yet remain. Doomed to diminish.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: I Could Read the Sky**

That first winter, I learned to read the sky.

My upturned face caught the first milled flakes. Nîn exclaimed over them with much sharp piping, even as I frowned, and cursed and cupped my hands!

I blew my palms, and stamped feet. Struck flint, and breathed life unto flame – leaping from stone to lichen, from lichen to leaf and bark of silver-birch. From bark to twig, branch to bough, and bough in time to bole of dead trees, wind-felled. And all above the clouds bruited darkling, and to my amaze, kindled in their own secret wrath, which walked on the far hills. Bright blazed the sky.

I found a seam of cuprous rock, and made my hands raw sand-burnishing black-veined malachite into gems for Nîn's hands – and she wondered over the green gems, and kissed my roughened palms. But she could not hold them in hers forever, and when she went abroad from my fire she left them behind, forgotten – and I frowned again, and sighed, furrowing my brow.

I was becoming good at that. And at cursing – which only made Nîn laugh, and writhe her quick hands in my hair, or tug my ears, and I could not but forgive her anything then!

But I was wroth. I cast my poor baubles into the flames. If she cared as little for my labour as some chance-found cuttlefish bone, some cupped shell or sleek raven-feather, then to the fire with them all!

In regret, I sought them in the embers, and found them – after a fashion, all melted together along their edges. I flaked at the ruddy amalgam, and polished it with my calloused thumb and smiled my secret smile. The one I hid from the hard world. The one I saved for her.

* * *

A greater blaze then I made, collecting heaped branches from afar, and even pulled down the deadfall behind our cave to feed the flames in their frenzy. Into a clay pot, fire-hardened, I put a great heaping of that cuprous ore, melled small, and did melt it down, and poured the sizzling fire-mead upon a great slab of smoothed shale to cool.

From the cold metal, I wrought wire, in fine curlicues, and spun them into a band for Nîn's brow, and bracelets for her wrists. Caged in the wire, I set the finer stones, buffed to stellar lustre with sharp white sand. And I made a broad torc for her neck – not polished as those other pieces, but I quenched it in the sea, in iridescent hues the like of which I never knew.

You smile. It was poor work – yet it was the first smithcraft the Quendi ever knew. Long before the Vala deigned to take an interest in our little doings, the secret flame quickened in me. And Nîn squeaked and was glad, wrapping her arms about my neck – grim, tall-stooped Eöl laughing like Aulë Himself to see her delight. And there and then, I had her, grimy from the forge-work as I was.

I knew then that I had found my calling. Though that copper-crafting was the first – and least – of my labours, it was the best-received. And bold Nîn made free among our people, who exclaimed much over her finery – which was better. Many came to my fire over that winter, to barter food and furs for my work and we were feasted like kings. Feasted and fêted – and we were welcomed to their dwelling-places, and Nîn often came and went, but I was loath to go oft abroad.

For I had Nîn, and Nîn was all the world I needed.

* * *

My well-tended fire never went out. I honed my art – and others came to me to learn. In those days, I was free with my work, and many dark-haired Noldo came to study fire-craft. I took many would-be apprentices amongst them in the early days – and watched all fall away for want of discipline, returning to their fires and their dark-haired Noldor girls!

All – save two only. Kélébrimbôr and Curufinwë, son of Finwë, who was hight Fëanor, _Spirit of Flame_. These alone came and kept silent and stirred not – brooding eyes basking upon the white coals, drawing the heat in upon themselves in a great draught that only quickened their thirst. Taciturn, as all great smiths are wont to be, hoarding the honed flame. I knew then that they would be great artisans, and surpass me in most things. They learned my little art, and went away when they had sounded my depths.

You cannot _make_ a smith. They are first born, then kindled.

All the same, I was glad when _he_ was gone from my hearth. You know well of whom I speak. The Kinslayer. He was perilous beyond measure, even then.

* * *

I learned to quicken. Made a bellows from goat-skin, inspired by Nîn's puffing cheeks imitating mine as I coaxed life from coals! – and another pair – rude pipes I made then, their chanters of bone. A pair for me, then a pair for Nîn, and we learned to play together – fey, fierce music that flared and crackled. She already had the nimble ornaments in mind from the songs of throstle and blackbird – sharp cuts, burbling rolls and cranns that popped and hissed like mutton on the spit.

Nîn played, and the music made her _more_ wild still – were such a thing possible! – and she strayed under the eaves of the westering woods beyond the white-capped Orocarni, her pipes in full tune as she tramped down Autumn's leaves.

And her fierce music brought strange dreams into being – things that stalked through the glades like a mustering wind between the trees, setting bough and bole to march and sway.

Ents, some call them, _Shepherds of the Trees_ , and I misliked them ever, and they me. For I am of Aulë, the Smith, and Nîn of green-gowned Yavanna, His bride: She who loves all living things, both the _kelvar,_ who run, and the _olvar,_ who still and wait – and stand and burn, if there is fire.

It was from them that Nîn learned mead-craft – to her joy and mine, you may be certain of it! (That and divers other things – curious lore of pipe-weed and wild mushrooms good for more than eating!) And with cross-eye, greatly perplexed, we supped the overflowing golden bowl.

Bán an Léanna was Nîn called ever after – _Woman of the Beer_ , and thus is she recorded in the annals of our race. And she was the best-loved then, my Nîn – amongst all three kindreds, on account of it!

Meantime, my hands were not idle. I fashioned for myself a fine axe, with a wedge of copper for a head, hafted with clean white ash, for the hewing of wood. An adze and a plane, for the turning of many barrels!

My thoughts turned to woodcraft, then. The mead-sleep inspired me with a passing-strange dream. I was minded to make some vessel to journey, borne upon the waters like a white-winged swan, to sojourn under sail upon Helcar's briny wastes. For even then, the streams of Ulmö ran in the blood of my Teleri kin, though we knew Him not, nor ventured East, to the unbridled ocean, or West many leagues, to the hallowed seas of Belegaer.

I began to fashion a bark, as seemed best to me. She was a keen blade for sea-cleaving, deep-sleek in the draft, broad enough athwart for two to sit abreast. But she ran twenty _rán,_ stem to stern, and was fitted for ten oar benches amidships, for many there were of high kindred amongst the Teleri whose hearts were stirred when they saw her, minded to plough Helluin's black wave and follow their star.

Of white oak were carved her keel and ribs, and her mast was a wind-uprooted cedar that yet yearned to stir before Manwë. Her oars, pliant spears of spruce, and white ash planked her sides over in seamless clinker-work. But her sharp prow was a black curlicue, like the scrollwork of a resonant fiddle, a sweetly-tuned _hardingfelé_ , which is understrung sympathetically. As indeed was my _knǫrr_ – a pair of thrice-plaited torsion-ropes strained, running the length of her keel to impart her flexibility.

For the grim Gods love not the hubris of Elves nor Edain, and what will not bend when Ossë walks the deeps and Ulmo thunders, will surely be riven, and borne under.

But it was Nîn's delight to weave her white sails, of fine twill combed from the winter coats of the white mountain hares she befriended, smorred with mutton-fat and orche to proof against the salt-air.

And our ship was never named, nor fated to sail but once.

* * *

I was half-done when the snows set in, and I turned my _knǫrr_ over, upside-down, to make our dwelling-place in her fat-bottomed stern, covering her entrance over with thick furs to keep out wind and sleet, all the ill-humours of the year's turning.

To keep my hand in, I fashioned a fine fiddle for Nîn, of maple offcuts and the sinews of bears I had hewn down with these two hands. For I was fierce and fell, and in that time wont to make trial of my solitary strength by seeking out other foes like-minded – haunts of the deep woods. Of their thick pelts, cleaned and tanned, were our bedding. And Nîn lay within, blithe and bare, dusky and beyond reproach, as she scraped her _hardingfelé_ , and when I went abroad hunting, she would tune the fiddle down, as though in reproof, into the _fanitûllen,_ the troll-tuning, bearing down hard with the bow, her fierce brow bruiting small thunder, and her mouth compressed into a hard line!

We had much salt-fish in store from my trading, bear-meat packed in salt and pemmican, and smoked venison, hung to cure. Blue-veined cheeses too, in their waxen rinds – for I was far from the only one amongst my people to learn new things and bring them into being. A glutton's luxury, laid up in provident store! And by then, even brisk Nîn was quite content to drowse away the bleak months then in my arms, and not to go wandering abroad, traipsing bare-foot through the snow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Valraukarí**

Nîn,her heart a lodestone, North-drawn, had been wont to follow her star. A being bold and utterly reckless, she was well-known to the Darkness that indwelt hard by; and the Power Ruinous that brooded beyond and beneath it, though His lesser creatures feared her face as they would a living flame. And her fell music was as Oromë of the Vala, His horn of wild kine winded strident calling the brave to battle – a bright fore-glimmer of pent vengeance out of the West.

But she had caught the ear and eye of Morgoth, Dark Foe of the World, as He gnawed upon Hate and Malice in the uttermost hells of Udûn. For too long lingered that eye in malice. And a being unclean, Morgoth sickened with the lust to degrade and to defile. To that end, He sent his sickly vassals abroad in great numbers – the Yrch, the _Twisted Ones_ , wrought beneath the earth in fearful labour – to find the small Singing One, wheresoever she might be found upon the shield of Middle-Earth, and bring her back alive to Him, that her small joy might be silenced.

Yet the dark-clutching miscegenations were ever loath to go and unwilling to find what their Master sought, and pressed themselves against the earth, aghast at their nakedness. For their pitiable, stunted forms were revealed to themselves and one another; and the unfettered wastes of sky above set them at naught. And the light of the Stars terrified them like a war-cry, the myriad spears of a mighty host arrayed against them, and they cowered and would not go on.

Little use proved they to themselves, even less to their angered Lord, egging – who bestirred Himself from His throne of Ruin, and sent forth His most dread servants. The stars above might be terrible, and the liminal light of the Trees – argent Telperion and glossy Laurelin – daunting, but the Valraukarí who had mustered at Morgoth's broad back were no less dreadful – the more so for their cruelty and proximity!

The Balrog's sullen, unholy fire was as that impressured heat which strains unbidden far beneath the ground, and it is said that these servants of Morgoth were ever foremost in the van of the titanic battles waged beneath Eä's crust in the Earth's hot forging, betwixt the Dark Foe and his nearest rival, Aulë.

For Aulë laid the ordained foundations of the World, with plumb-line and rule – and Melkö shattered them with His mailèd fist. Aulë raised continents, and Morgoth levelled them. Aulë, with great labour, turned the basins of the Oceans upon His wheel, and Ulmo, Lord of Waters, filled them – and the two brothers embraced, manly tears in eye to see what the two of them had made between them!

But another brother woke in scalding and steam. And Morgoth named Ulmo foe, and drove Him away, and upset the brimming sea from shore, and never again were those waters quiet after, but filled with passion and violence. And everything the Maker did, the Unmaker marred. It was the unclean fires of the Balrogs – slumbering sluggish-sullen, suddenly roused – which leashed the lips of whole landmasses, and hurled them against each other, or dragged them down into that abyss of heat and wrath beneath.

Now those flaming leashes were unlimbered, swishing and cracking behind the Yrch, and the Balrog's swift swords seared forth from sheath, and the chattel of Morgoth fled before them, fear mastering fear, to do their dread Lord's bidding.

The snarling of the Balrogs pursued them, of words unutterable – a shuddering grinding, a land-riving – and a thirsting heat, as the Valraukarí opened their brimming maw; and lava poured forth slow. So those few Yrch who proved laggard were consumed utterly, and others lost their way in their terror, and many fell to their deaths from the high places in their flight. But the most of their multitude were unmarred and made their way clear, a black tide of sickness and blight frothing forth unto the green Northlands.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Evermind**

The return of Spring brought forth _uilos_ once more, unto woe. The Evermind that ever has white-cloaked the barrows of our honoured dead. With it comes a curse of children – and a reminiscence of abiding sorrow.

Nîn, nosing forth to test the air, was the first to taste their fragrance. Well she knew their portent. A kindling of children – but not for her, and then was Nîn surprised by sudden sorrow. For the want ran deep, and the knowledge, child of mind, sprang forth, terrible of spear: never would Nínithèl, daughter of none, bring forth life.

Then it was as a shadow fell upon her, vast, hurled down from North to South – a Shadow cast by no light, unless it were by the thrawn memory of such an indwelling. Fell, it drew in upon Nîn, and darkened her eyes, and cast her brow down, and with it fell her dark-tangled hair, as it were a hidden sward.

Secret were the things that passed under that dark, but I surprised that clinging glamour, all unawares as I returned from combing for sea-smoothed driftwood. Yet I felt enough of that Presence, enfolding as a raven's glossy wing that baffles light and returns it as darkness.

Long have I dwelt upon that hue, and it entered me, and in time my art brought it forth, in the black steel, _galvorn_ , though then I knew it not. And yet I did, for were not its subtle fetters bands tight about my breast? And I might not breathe in that pent instant, nor give cry.

My lumber fell from my hands, and I pitched upon my knees, and the Spring air clove my ribs like a keen blade – and that broke the dwimmercraft, for Nîn turned upon me.

Anguish was in her eye. That flowing bowl, so full in the round that it might contain the wisdom of Yavanna herself was a cup drained to bitter lees.

All that remained was Want. And Nîn, fierce as any bated hawk, hated me utterly in that moment. To see her so bereft, reduced to base need. Barren.

Nîn struck at me then, as a hawk will over its kill, a raking swipe with clawed fingers. Intent to pluck the eyes from my head, for seeing what they should not, I think it – and I snatched my head back, and kept my sight, though her nails laid open my face in great gouges.

Here. See?

Nîn would have killed me then. I am sure of it, for I would not have stayed her in my consternation. For she snatched up my axe of bright bronze, where it leaned against our dwelling-place. But there was a powerful _seidr_ written into that first axe of mine, for much love and lore went into her crafting, and loath was she to turn against he who fashioned her, and find a home in his flesh.

The haft slipped in Nîn's hand, and the gleaming cuprous head came about, and all unwilling, she confronted her own stark-staring countenance reflected therein that mirror – and recoiled in horror. For all that was seeming fair in her had fouled – her apple-cheeks infallen hollows, the shapely line of jaw, harsh slashes of black-burnt charcoal. Worst, her eyes. Tarns of malice, pitiless they were, rimed treacherous with black ice. For she loved herself not in that moment, so how could she hope to be lovely, or love another?

I thought I heard a Voice then, uttering up from the stones beneath my feet, so that I trembled, and my sure foundation upon the sea-smoothed shore of Helluin subsided beneath me in a hellish grinding, like the walking ice floes of the Helcaraxë. No words. Just a hateful laughter, dinning in my bones.

And Nîn, who had fallen beside me, looked up into my stricken face, as one who has been dealt her death. A wordless, mortal plea for reprieve. For Death had come early to Helluin, and stalked the black shore under the perilous stars.

" _Mime móna na-saura mí me_ _!_ " she cried, and clawed at her flat belly with both hands.

I seized her by the wrists – dreading what wild harm she might do herself. Terrified of my own strength. Those slender arms, fitted for honour, gouged with the very bangles of copper I had adorned them with, springing vivid in red weals as she ripped them from her!

But she would not be held by me, by heart, by hand or handfasting, my Nîn – who was never truly mine, and who now was not even her own. She tore herself from me, and I could not stay her.

She was like some wily white-socked fox, who has stepped in one of my bright-seeming snares of copper wire, and rather than be caught, will gnaw off her own paw to gain her liberty. Thus was Nîn, trapped in whorls of copper and of bronze. Caught in the close circle of my arms. Fierce and fey, she strove for a reckless freedom, and I relinquished, for fear she would hurt herself worse..

And yet her wordless plea: _Save me, even from myself!_

And so I would, I resolved, even as she turned upon her heel, naked as she was, clad only in the dark pelt of her hair, and sprang away into the tangled woods of bloody red rowan that clad tall Illuín, and was lost to my sight in the liminal twilight. I would hasten after until the madness ran its course, and seek to protect her as best I might. If she would let me.

And I swore a mighty oath, upon all the Vala but one, that I would return with Nín, hale by my side – or not at all. Unless it came to pass that she demanded I leave her to her solitary ends, whether she was in her right mind or no. For I was her lover, and not her jailor.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Beyond the Grace of Gods**

Haste is the enemy of craft – and yet my need was pressing. I lingered only to snatch up my long-axe whence Nîn had let her fall amongst the stones. A bronze tooth, bitter-biting, she had little ruth in her – whether wood, living flesh or bone, her rede was to strike sorely, once and for all.

 _The swiftest stroke oft goes astray_ – even children know this, but my heart was ever heedless in fear, that all-consuming blaze. My feet, shod to purpose, sought the high lands, where fell tarn and stream in notched crevice, the care-lines wrought upon the visage of Illuín – who never felt the hoar-frosts of a mountain's long years, but was worn weary in youth by the fell things that unfolded at his feet.

Where the boulders broke before my passing, knapped beneath my eager feet into plunging gulf, unsounded, did I leap, risking all. Where the rocks reared up in wrath, then I flung myself at their face, my axe finding purchase, and clawed my way aloft, in spite of the black winds, North-woken, that sought my destruction. To tear me from the heights, and hurl my broken body down in ruin upon the rocks.

I found the march of the snows, in their braiding coil, and I laughed, fey to feel Winter's long grip upon my limbs. For this was life! – life at life's limits, all wagered to win all – and there was such heady freedom in it. Such lightening of heart to know I did all I could, and might dare nor hazard no more.

Lightning broke about me, close enough I could smell the smelt of fire-sundered rock. Thunder rolled, and the wind soughed and clove to me, a gale parted by the shafts of a marching phalanx. For I have heard such things, when the kin of Elu Thingol made their muster against the Yrch, marching the wrath-road, their eager pennons borne on before.

And I laughed, fey, and dared all Gods and Powers – even Manwë Súlimo, whose rude hands sought to tumble me from the strakes of Illuín to a formless, broken death at his foot. And even Morgoth, the Dark Foe of the World, whose dark counsel had set my Nîn upon fateful path.

* * *

At last I made Illuín's riven peak, clinging to that long scarp of slow-combing stone which crested pent above Helluin. And, perching upon that flinty outcropping, fierce and free as the far-sighted eagles of Manwë, I sought Nîn with my eyes in longing. For I could not have followed after where she had fled, fleeting through wood and glade. But from my high vantage, I could hope to catch a glimpse from afar, to divine which way went she, and then to follow after tireless, even to the world's end.

There! I marked her – slipping out from beneath the green-hemming shade of the Wildwood. North pressed she – ever north, into the barren land crooked betwixt the Orocarni and a nameless range, North-neighbouring, of ferrous rock that wept tears of blood. The Iron Mountains, these were named after, a rampart raised by the Dark Foe of the World, with much groaning labour, to thwart the onset of the Vala.

My heart quailed. Beyond… a hazard of gnashing ice. Crevasses and glaciers marring Aman like a torturer's knife. A white peril, where was Ulmo fettered in frozen chains, the haunt of dire creatures of hunger.

And from the unclaimed tracts that roofed the world beyond even that, a black cenotaph, rising where no light might find its way. Hell above, an iceberg of malice borne upon fathomless black seas. Hell below, the sunken foothills of the berg, upon which ships founder. The pits of Udûn – which no living creature has witnessed, and returned to tell of.

A true North Pole. An ebon spindle around which the wyrd of Aman was being woven.

Yet North my path must surely lie. To run the crest of the Orocarni, rather than descending to the green-gowned foothills below. My quarry ever in sight, to spur flagging limbs, until our wyrd crossed in the Iron Mountains. Or unto the White Wilds, or light's limits – to the mourning halls of the Black Foe of the World himself, if need be! So I swore it – upon Nîn herself, most beloved, and not those empty shadows of godhood, the Vala. For I was going into realms beyond the grace of Gods.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: Valacirca**

Sharp-footed, weary, I at length plunged down from the knife-wind-whipped crests of the Orocarni, combing late in white snow. That snow in torrent coursed swiftly after upon my heels, an avalanche, that I scarce came down alive to where the mountain ring meets forest green, of fragrant pine arustle in needles. I brought Death in my wake to Yavanna's green dominion, and I cared no more for the fall of tall fir and mountain ash than for fir-cones shed in season. Only for Nîn.

Who I saw afar, in haste hellbent. She turned not to see the forest founder and fall, and I knew her out of earshot. And yet I called and called, scraping raw my voice to no avail. And hastened after upon bleeding feet.

* * *

Many hours hence – she drew no further ahead, yet I no nearer, across a glazed tundra – I saw to my amaze a wintry blaze, as it were of seven ruinous stars, drawn perilous-nigh to the earth. Cold they kindled, sharpening as day waned, and at I first I thought they must be the Valacirca scythe, swung low to reap life.

But then forth Telperion's waking rays struck upon those swift-stars, and I saw them true as sons of Elven-kin, in passing strange raiment, of some new metal that glimmered dim like woken tin or polished argent. And I knew them for the sons of Curufinwë then, for who else amongst the Starwoken had the craft to fashion such a harness?

Their helms high, their lances pennoned azure and silver – and they were mounted upon white-fleeting steeds, as the Vanyar, tamers of horses. I saw their path clear, and misgiving seized my heart – for their course drew nigh that of Nîn, at the horizon asymptote.

My eye bent upon light, I overlooked a creeping, reaching Darkness spreading South and East across the plain, that the cold-wrought light of the Tree of Silver scoured on before it in rout.

But my own track would intercept that of the Noldo ere they caught up with Nîn, daughter of none.

* * *

And when they saw me, they reined in. Shoaling steel-bright like stream-pike, they turned about, and ringed me round. A withy of hardened ash-wood, their lowered lances hemming, as though they named me foe.

And I stood all amaze, and bade them give me answer – my fingers light upon the good haft of my sharp axe:

"Well met, sons of Fëanor! How come you so far afield for your sport? For I see the spoor of neither hart nor hare upon this trackless plain.

Or is it the crooked Yrch you are minded to harry, girt for war as you are, your thighs clad with mail links and stern swords by your sides? Else some dread servant of Melkö? For surely your prey must be a passing dangerous creature – armed as you are, and so grim of face!"

For a long while, they gave no tongue, nor would they readily meet my eye – but my throat was crowned tight by their lance-heads of burnished bronze, as a victor's crown of laurel.

Then Curufin laughed darkly. "We hunt neither hare nor hart, nor yet any dark and creeping thing that burdens green Arda. Nay, that which we pursue is passing fair, and wild – nor a quarry unwilling I deem, her wanton nakedness drawing us eager on. And our attentions indeed prove unwelcome, what harm will come of it? Who will believe her complaint? For she is free with her affections – and all know it!

Ah! You glower so. Seek not to stay us, _svartálfar_ – for she has fired my blood so, I would little reck nor rue the spilling of yours!"

But I would hear no more of him. My bright axe spoke well enough upon my behalf, unlimbered, and their spearheads were shorn by that keen edge, leaving the Noldos' grasping hands burdened with useless lumber.

Curufin scrabbled for the _seax_ upon his left hip, as he used his knees to bring his blue-eyed cremello about – and I felt a terrible blow upon my collar-bone as Caranthir brought the base of his long kite shield down upon my shoulder with a feral snarl. But I had grasp of Curufin by his sword-belt, and dragged that callow child from his saddle to sprawl at my feet, mastered. A blow of my heel fractured his sword-arm like dry kindling, and I seized his forearm, my fingers pincers, and twisted savagely, grinding his face into the ground.

Curufin mewled like a rabbit. I wrenched the haughty silvered helm from his brow, and his carrion-bird plumage spilled free from the casque, like a wash of black blood. His eyes were dazed, and blood trickled from his split lip. Those lips twitched – intent on plea – and I idly pinwheeled my axe upon its leather thong.

"Not another move, my brave Noldor lads!" I dared them all, wild-eyed, "else I will dash out this nithing's few wits upon the sward!"

They must have loved their brother – for they stilled.

"Get down off your horses," I commanded, and with them dismounted, a hard slap to the rump of each of the seven Mearas sent them galloping riderless towards the Wild Wood.

"Strip!" I snarled. And they did, of arms, and armour, to stand in their tunics.

"Did you hear me not? _Strip._ "

When they, too, stood as naked as their intended quarry, I picked through their mail, noting the flecks of rust upon the hooded brynie-coats they wore.

 _Ah_ , I thought to myself. _Iron._

Meantime, the nithing sons of Feanor shivered and cupped their groins, to cover their poor excuses for manhood. All except Curufin, he who had angered me worst. A blow to the templewith the flat of my bronze had stilled his sheep's bleating. Yet he breathed. For now.

Ah, but what to do with them?

 _Kill him,_ a cold voice counselled, that seemed to swirl about with me with the North Wind.

 _Kill them all._

A cold rede, but the more I dwelt upon it, the better I liked it. They would have done worse to Nîn, for the sport of it. And should I let them live to bear the tale, what justice could I hope to find from their Noldo kin for my hard actions? For were they not the sons of the Spirit of Flame, and the greatsons of Finwë, their High King?

Yet never yet had Elf slain Elf in Aman.

Caranthir – the eldest and leader among this unkindness of ravens – saw the bent of my dark thought. Yet was he undaunted, even with his brother's life in the balance. Flushed with fury.

"My life for that of Curvo," he offered, through bared teeth.

"Your lives are all mine, child," I told him coldly. "Mine to do with as I will. 'What harm of it?'" I jibed, minding him of Curufin's cruel words.

"Come here, boy," I motioned, hefting my long-toothed axe. "Stand before me." I would let my axe decide his fate, just as it had decided mine in Nîn's hand.

And Caranthir met my eyes, and dared me.

"Do your worst, crookback."

And I swung with all my might.

Yet again, the axe turned in my hand. The flat laid down dark Morifinwë beside his younger brother. But he lived – though my true heart begrudged him breath.

Then the youngling, russet Amrod, puled, "My father shall hear of this!"

I laughed. "Tell him! And if Fëanor wills to stand before me in the _holmgang_ , between the branches, sword in hand, bid him bring one of his own crafting – and not one of his master's!"

Then I drove them away South, for I was in haste. They had already wasted enough of my – of Nîn's – precious time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: Bloodrose**

She is fleeing from. I am fleeing _to_.

So I draw nearer in this nameless tract. People claim what they desire to possess. Words, their field-markers. If this land, sere beyond tears, ever bore elfclaim, it long ago arose and threw off the yoke. An expanse of crimson, blood leached upon a glaze of snow, and the iron hills bounding have drawn away to an asymptote of yearning, a meniscus at the horizon. Black as scabrous blood under True Twilight – the lost hours falling between the ecliptic discs cast from the Two Trees.

I crush the red _seregon_ underfoot. Trample rose-petals into frosted snow. The sprawl of thorns is one singular plant, one great tree at ankle-height, spread over many acres, cruel-hooked, treacherous. Its incestuous bloody bloom wells up in my eyes, a crimson tide. It is said that the bloodrose is the one fair thing Melkö ever made for the love of making, but ever in it twists the foreboding of His farsight – a knowledge of things as yet unwritten to rival Manwë Himself.

And it clutches at you, like fear. Like foreboding. Spreads like a cancer. Poisons the soil, that no other living thing may grow where it does. Jealous of life itself.

The hammering of my heart, the loudest sound in the world. A tern's battering wings, fierce and futile. My breast breached, heart's burden waxing beyond my flesh, cleaving sharp as thrush song.

Lungs full of white ice. Glassy threads that insinuate outwards. I am falling apart. If I thaw, I will fracture along those myriad faultlines. Shatter like glass.

Still I am impelled. Memory is jealous too, those spurs every whit as sharp as any thorn:

Nîn's eyes, gold-veined green, wonder-widened. A rich seam. My breath, impressured steam, which scalds the air. The strength in her heavy thighs tight about my waist as we couple. Is it that tawny strength that crushes my breast in thrall's bonds? I think I can hear her laughing. Mouthing warm breath into my ear.

The way she would draw out a note on her _hardingfelé_ , all purity of intent. Tongue firmly between teeth, she was wont to tease it like yarn unspooling. Then a wink, and a whickering harmonic, like her nails playful down my back. Her frown, the _fanitûllen_ , a thing of subharmonics. Invective. Rasp of her tongue in ire, like a cat's grooming. Like my file, smoothing my sharp edges into something she could hold.

This fear racks me. Every frozen sinew drawn taut.

I wish I had killed Caranthir. Curufin, too. Their blood on the snow. It wouldn't have been enough. Not nearly! Nîn would have hated me for it, mind. Nîn, who in her right mind would not have needed my protection. She would have flayed them all. She would have done it with her tongue. Sent them skulking away, hangdog, tail shrivelling between legs!

That she could not. _That_ angered me more than their evil, and their lust. That would have been what the sons of Fëanor died for.

It matters not. What does is that she draws nearer. I have not the breath to hail her, and she knows not that I follow, but I will have her. I must.

* * *

It is a rime of rust that my feet crush now, and my heart bounds like a stag. Anticipation, and knowledge that the true test of heart lies yet ahead. The foothills of the Iron Mountains have leapt up about me, of a sudden, their snow-capped peaks before me. Time dilates, a midnight pupil yearning to drink in fading light.

I see the mark of her feet, light as the track of a mountain hare. I see other spoor too, things that rede caution, but my blood is afire and would call such counsel cowardice. The shambling tracks of many Yrch. A pack, some threescore or more – I see where they have sprawled upon their bellies like beasts to drink rusty water from the tarn I chase uphill to its source, winding bitter-gritty between cuprous, fronded beds of lichen. Between soft-flaking rocks. I can read the all-consuming imperative in their thirst. The memory of a terrible burning that yet drives them. They have snatched a few mouthfuls of water – lapping it up like dogs.

Higher up the watercourse, I find one, dead, its naked body half in, half out of the stream. I have never seen one before. An emaciated thing, worn down to nothing. Skin like water-rotted leather, drawn tight upon brittle bone. It is marked by torment. Back scabbed by sores, which have cracked and peeled like cooling lava. Prognathous of jaw, gaunt of cheek, the more accentuated by the palm-span breadth of its convex compound eyes, wide-set like a hare's. Glossy even in death. A fly's eye, staring.

This can be no natural being. It is a thing of _seidr_ , a made thing marred. Creation twisted back upon itself. I shudder, considering the ramifications. An ingraft into the stock of the Firstborn, maybe, spliced with something less than animal. Something insectile. A cockroach, maybe. Chitinous, scrabbling, hungry, hardy.

The Twisted Ones hunt here. I do not fear the Yrch, for all the revulsion they inspire in me. But I scent something far worse, and _that_ sets my skin to crawl in knowing loathing. Something pestilent, like a sickness of the blood. Like corruption in a wound.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: IT**

It is no thing of note to hunt a band of Yrch, by track and slot. Their clumsy tread churns the clay to mire, and their waste fouls the stream, that I pursue dry-mouth, ever uphill. My only fear that their shambling trail masked hers turning aside.

Mine to follow boldly – what danger pose the stone-spawned to any Elf? Knock-kneed and brittle, their twisted limbs like fallen sticks grown over-mossy, and their hides like wet vellum. Fear and fury fuelled me.

But something else has been here, and that gives me pause. I scent a carrion reek, as a fane at full moon, as of blood spilt secret in the dark. Yet I find small trace of its passing – deft, it touched the earth, like a stranger.

At length I scry the raptor's track, a faint imprint the length of my forearm. This wight walks upright on two legs, like Elf or Man, but there the semblance ends. Avian, alien. A thing hollow-boned like a bird. Feet shod with claws or talons, lean and angular of limb. Like a heron, of staring eye, haunt of stream, longing for nothing better than to spear a silver fish with its raking bill, and gulp down its still-living meal, cold and bloody.

My eyes watch the heavens, with some misgiving. My high heart palled.

* * *

I press up a red-carved cleft, the clay waterbroke. Into a writhe of small, crooked laurels, their stems furred with fronds of yellow lichen, copper leaves a waiting victor's crown under Laurelin's soft nimbus.

Those leaves dull sword-blades that break on the anvil of my breast as I thrust through them, snapping twig and limb – for I see Nîn at last, a bare score of paces ahead, hemmed by a black and heaving tide of Yrch. Three deep they throng her round, but many are the bodies cast up about her like bladderwrack, broken by her hands, both strong and clever. A bulwark of dead that dismays the cowardly, creeping wights. A stone of offence, to turn their cloven feet as they come at her.

I fall upon them before they know it. My whetted axe as flame when the bellows roar. As sunrise, hurling back stark shades of night. These two hands know no skill, only to kill. To wreak these loathsome things. Sink that long bronze tooth into their yielding meat and break them open. Let light into their darkness.

They claw at me with splintered nails. I crush their ribs under my trampling feet. Break their skulls with blows of my bare fist.

This is exhilarating!

They flee my face. Hot, I harry after, scything backs. I slake my rage, until I remember myself again. Remember Nîn, and turn back to find her.

* * *

She turns to me, her bare flesh brazen under the auric rise-light of the Golden Tree as she opens her arms to me. I bathe in her regard. Hope and joy dinning in her eyes to find herself. To find me there for her…

Cauled sudden in eldritch shadow. An eclipse unlooked-for stealing a march upon her, a cold stole falling over pebbled flesh. Yet that shade has substance and form. Sharp talons drag over comely shoulders like cobwebs. Grave-grown nails caress bare flesh, a breath's pressure away from breaking skin, as they close about Nîn's neck like a trap.

Nîn turns then, apprising horror – and is caught in the deadlights of IT's gaze. Vulpine face. Tortuous, elongated head. Crooning arch of neck, mother to child. IT's dugs, flaccid folds of skin that give no suck. This wraith does not nurture. It only feeds. That is IT's nature.

Carrion breath in Nîn's ear, syllables that steal will. Arid hunger in those fricative, formless words that suck marrow from dry bones.

IT is a hollow thing. Hollow bones, hungering veins. Emaciated frame, parchment skin that frog-webs between digits and limbs. This miscegenation is old and foul. Far older than anything in this young world has any right to be. Formed in an abyss, a black, gravid void where no light can ever reach the eye. Beyond time itself.

Unsane, unwholesome, starving loathsome _thing_.

Vampire.

I try and cry out, but those dank, mildewed eyes fall upon me, and the breath freezes in my lungs. I can only watch as IT leers, and that crepitant face breaks open like a crevasse, a maw of hollow needle teeth that yawn agape and bite like winter.

IT battens slow, soft, sensuous upon Nîn's neck. A single bead of crimson wells – such tenderness! Such delicacy! Such ardent rapture on that haughty, bladed countenance that IT approaches beauty, approaches love.

* * *

The spell breaks. I stumble forward, breath expelled sudden in a harsh, hurt pang that takes my vigour as old-age takes the children of Men. I am battered to my knees by the musty, buffeting wind of IT's wings.

IT rakes us with IT's pealing joy as IT vaunts the skies. An enormity of shadow spreading wide to fill the void.

Nîn falls to my arms. Her eyes roll up in her head, and mercifully, she swoons.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: The Living Dead**

I clutched Nîn to me as the sky reft and wept. Her skin clammy to my hands. My face struck with chill rain as I raised it in hope to the black, denying heavens.

I wrapped her in my sodden cloak. Still she swooned. She was colder than the ground, but not dead, no! Her heart beat its threnody. Fast but light, like rainfall patter on leaves. It takes a deal to kill the Firstborn.

* * *

Somehow, against my will, sleep caught me up. Woke with the acrid scent of sweat-scorched lanolin in my nostrils. Ripe and sharp. The heat baking from Nîn like fresh bread, and some tang in it that set the hairs to stand upon my neck. And then I no longer wanted her in my arms. I tensed, a thrall waiting for the lash to fall. But I held her.

Telperion ascendant. An arc of silver, falling over us. I saw Nîn stir. Flinch, febrile, as from a flame brought close. A guttural noise, part whimper, rose from her lips, and with it, the note of something spoiled. High, ketotic, like ripe meat. And the penumbra of light breaking upon us revealed a delicate tracery, ink-black, of veins outlined. A chart, marking ruinous rivers. And though I did not understand, then still was I appalled.

Her eyes opened. Lashes gummed. A hot gaze, bloodshot eyes. Nîn looked up at me as though from afar. From the bottom of a well. There was distance there, and depth, like the unsounded chasms beneath the ebon skin of the Sea of Helcar. Lightless gulfs, where hot currents rise strangely, twisting through the murk, and anything whatsoever can coil and wait. Eyes grown bulbous, wide as dinner plates, all pupil, the better to know light and shun it. Battening on unclean things, on things like itself but weaker.

Nîn's eyelids fluttered. "Eöl…" she managed, dragging up the words like an anchor from the seabed. Then her eyes closed, and her curdled breathing deepened. Thickened, clotting as blood scabs wound.

Healing, I hoped, unwitting.

I listened to the change in her, until I, too, slept.

* * *

I came round to her clung about me. Her head buried in the hollow of my neck. I did not open my eyes. Caution informed me.

Felt the points of her teeth trace down from my jaw, coiling delicacy in her movements. I stiffened, and she stilled, like an adder does when you surprise it crossing a forest path. I caught a glimpse of her eye – and recoiled in horror. Onyx eyes. Glossy black, avid.

Hissing sudden, she was on me, now I began to know her for what she was. I got my forearm under her chin as she tried to bite me, and it was all I could do to hold her off me, the hunger in her making her fell and fierce. She was strong, the more so envenomed, and I fought for dear life, flesh crawling in horror.

Close pressed together, as she sought my flesh. A bleak parody of coupling, limbs writhing entwined. But I proved the stronger, because I think .. I _hope_ .. the part of her that remained Nîn fought alongside me against the vampire. Still, it was all I could do to keep her teeth and nails from me, until at length Laurelin rose in auric splendour, and at the touch of the Tree's searing rays, the unclean spirit fled from her, unable to bear that God-hallowed light.

Sweat-soaked, weary, soul-sick, we knew each other at a glance, honest tears spilling down her cheek, welling up from those black, staring weals. Not a sound we made, either of us. Then Nîn sprang up, and fled me again. This time I let her go.

I knew what she would do and I, coward, did not have the strength to see her do what was necessary.

* * *

I found her quickly, when I heard her cry. It was done cleanly. Her, folded over a stake of rowan wood whose point she had driven into her breast. The blood berries weft into her hair. Her eyes were her own again. That was a mercy, I think.

I fell by her side, and swooned as one who is dead.

* * *

I woke. Made myself busy, taking my axe to the grove in a frenzy, finishing what Nîn had begun, teeth bared, hacking, the sweat rolling off my brow. From branch and bough of those youngling trees, I made a travois, strips of bark weaving to knot the frame together, and on it, I laid my grey cloak. I had washed it in the beck, and wrung it dry of tears.

Nîn I laid on the bier, and folded the broad cloth over. Bound her onto it with my bowcord. Closed her eyes with my fingers. Crowned her brow golden with laurels. For I must bear Nîn, daughter of none, back to our people, that we might do her honour.

And after… I was minded to set her bier upon my long ship. Set her prow North, to the star, and take a maiden voyage into Helluin, flame in heart, flame in hand. Flame upon pyre, flame to claim the living and the living dead. Thus I reckoned myself.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: Bier**

Numbness. Snow streaming, cleft by the prow of my leaning form. Snowmelt upon my cheeks, cold smarting sere eyes. It is elegiac.

I furrow south, dragging Nîn's bier. I hardly feel the weight. Nothing to her, really. The balance of her being, _fëa_ , is fled her form. Leaving little. Laid out, snow-mantled like a mortal. A bird fallen, frozen, arrested.

I cannot look at her remains. Would not touch them, for all of me. It is not her, and to dwell upon her thus, a form of idolatry.

I cannot tell how long I track. The heavens dance about me. Telperion and Laurelin cast their glamour, silver and gold, and my shadow weaves deft between. On high, an aurora frosts crisply, emerald. I hear the absence of Nîn's joy at the sight, louder than the screams of dying stars.

Beauty wounds.

I would end thus. Set my bladed face into the cold and walk until I numb. Until strength fails and I fall. But it takes a deal to kill us, even when we would endure no more. So it is that my people rise up around me like wraiths, and their dwellings like grave-markers, resolving from the grey.

I pass through them as they open their ranks. Between them, and not of them. They follow after. A silent thronging. I feel their reproach. It is a black, unremitting shadow that falls true upon my shoulders. North to south.

* * *

My feet find the way to the wave-lapped shore, where that secret sea holds its truths beneath its black rind. A gloaming has come up out of the depths, deadening the beating of the waves, stilling my heart, and no bird calls. The people falter as they approach my roaming home. Their ranks massed at my broad back like battles, Vanyar, Noldo and Teleri. Three kindreds arrayed for Life against Death.

I work. Overturn my home, and set her prow South, sea-yearning. Roll logs to make a slipway that my vessel might find Helluin. And I fill her hold with precious cargo. Yes, indeed. I am long at gathering timber, wind-fallen, to build Nîn's bier, for I am choosy. It is of silver-birch, that the flame may enter in, and leaf-clad rowan boughs too, that drip tears of blood. And cedar, yes, for fragrance. Cedar, and pine, rich in amber sap, welling up slow.

Upon the pyre I lay her atop a cloth of white linen, starboard of the mainmast, whose furled sail waits upon the spar. Over her feet, like a throw, I drape a woollen cloth of royal purple dye. A harvest of the deep: sea-snails that the tide bore up with the bright star ascendant, salt-steeped three days and the essence boiled, then the wool impregnated. And about her shoulders, cloth-of-gold, the linen wrapped with the finest beaten gold wire.

There is a place for me, too. At her right hand, the mast a chaste partition betwixt us.

* * *

Others come up, tentative, to make their offerings. A tithe of the living for the dead. They come in ones and twos, and few of them can find the hardihood to look me in the face. I meet them with determined civility. I thank them, because it is as she would have wanted.

The first two are those I have a regard for: mighty Beleg Cúthalion, grim and grizzled. He, too, cannot bear to look upon her. There is a frankness in his grief that I envy. Tears that rain down his cheeks, his breast hooming heavy sighs. He clasps me about the shoulders, and I feel his bow-won strength. And I would I could weep, and share in his grief, but I am frozen. Pinioned between the syllables of being.

Beleg has no gift: "There is nothing fitting," he owns, without shame.

How right he is! From any other, I would own it niggardly. But he is bereft. He _has_ nothing. A great warrior disarmed and set at naught by a thing beyond him, like a child. He is honest.

Elwë Silverhair is the next mourner. Tallest of all the Elves, and first of my kin, the Teleri. This is what a king must be. He is possessed of a great tranquillity. A gravity of bearing, of being. He _is_. Still as a woodland mere, fitted for reflection. His presence is as breath filling my lungs. The grandeur of his grief lends context, leading me to contemplation.

How solemn his eyes, silver. Bands of argent fill his hands. A weighty gift, worthy, given freely. "I would have given these with better heart for your handfasting," says he. "She _did_ love you, Eöl Dubh! Do _not_ doubt her now." Fierce, his penetrating gaze, though he does not raise his voice. And though I have doubted, and do even now, I could not then, under his awful regard. Here is truth.

I loved him for that. Still do, though we are estranged. Elu Thingol, greatest of the Firstborn.

* * *

Ship meets sea as many hands make light work. It is my Teleri people, as one, and we do not suffer others to help. Nîn is of us, and we of her. She glides over the log flume, and her beak cuts the sea like a sharp knife slicing the waxen black rind of a cheese, without sound or splash.

I light a pine brand, pitch-steeped, that reeks and crackles. Alight from the cold wave-break over her side. I cast the torch into her stern, and the pitch caulking goes up with a soft whump. The heat upon my back, like my forge, as I unfurl the sail Nîn wove and smorred, and my _knǫrr_ makes her maiden voyage. She leaps forward, under the fire-woke exhalation of hot air. Impelled by her own dying breath. Vaunting.

I will stay with her. Walk the whale-road with Nîn. As in life, so in death.

"No, lad! She wouldn't want this." It is Beleg, stronger than any bear. His arms fasten round my torso, hauling me away from Nîn. Something snaps in me, like a frayed bowcord. I fight, feral. I smash his nose, throwing my head back into him, but he holds on, swearing. Dragging me to the side with unanswerable strength, and over and the waters break over us both in baptism.

I surge from the waves, weeping out my fury, and Beleg holds me as my _knǫrr_ , and Nîn, bank into the raven's wing of her funeral pall, which closes blackly about her. Her sail, soot-black, akindle.

Afterwards, there were songs:

 _I fear drowning no longer –_

 _it is the keeping afloat_

 _that troubles me._

 _So I endure_

 _to tread water, far too far from shore_

 _I was told it was well for me._

* * *

 _I find the warm press_

 _of serrated metal_

 _into my flesh a comforting presence,_

 _despair is a good comforter, too –_

 _should I fold_

 _into her waiting wings, I need know no more_

 _I can know her hold_

 _when I cannot sleep._

* * *

 _Let that black tide drag me down_

 _and carry me out_

 _most of all_

 _I cannot bear_

 _to love (or think I love)_

 _another, again._

* * *

 _I will fashion for myself_

 _a breastplate of barbed wire_

 _if I must live. I will not again_

 _raise my eyes_

 _to beautiful things_

 _that I will mar with my touch._

* * *

 _I cannot bear_

 _that I cannot close_

 _the book on my shame._

 _I cannot bear_

 _that I see a tender thing_

 _that I would protect –_

 _this most of all._

* * *

 _I will make a room of stone_

 _and it shall have a door of steel_

 _and I will hold the key –_

 _and in my room_

 _I will allow_

 _no living thing but me_

 _I will trust a candle flame –_

 _no arrow-slit to let_

 _day's lossy light leave me! –_

 _for after day comes night_

 _love, loss_

 _laughter, silence_

 _After the clasp of your hand_

 _comes when you withdraw yourself._


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: A Working of Iron**

The Kingshold of Finwë, son of none, was the loftiest dwelling under Illuín. Of course it was. Noldo pride demanded the Gonhirrim vaunt above all others! And I smiled wry when first I saw it, for was it not my knǫrr turned upside-down and builded big, that sea-faring vessel of twenty oars? Just as Nîn and I had wintered in it, snow-capped, homely.

Then I recalled her absence and that grief struck thoughts of craft from mind awhile.

Yet it was a seemly fastness, all the same, whose curved keel, frost-rimed, ridged a roof clad in a brynie of copper scales, like an elf's storied gear of war. The Kingshold was framed out with buttressing-joists coming to an acute angle above. It ran south to north, prow cleaving the black draughts that came raking down over the Orocarni, in talons of snow and hail. Say what you will of the Noldor – and I have! – they face their foes.

And it was a martial building. Of that have no doubt. Her vaunting walls, below the clinkered copper that rooved her, were a _skjaldborg_ – a shield-wall, locked together, fashioned of those kite-shields the warrior sons of Finwë so love to bear into battle – four-pointed, rimed argent like the North Star. Her strakes, spears grimly glinting. As for the wonders within – you will have to look to another scop than I for their telling! For Eöl Dubh was never welcome under that roof, in foul times nor fair.

Curufinwë made her. And for the first time, I envied another his craft. Yet my heart misgave me – for where were the foes that Fëanor the Fell, son of Finwë, sought to guard against?

I give you the truth. He made most of them with his own two hands. Those clever, jealous hands – so apt to craft, so swift to violence. For did he not draw upon his own brother, Fingolfin the Valiant, even in his father's hold in Aman? Yet that came after.

For that grim hall stirred within me fame-yearning of mine own. To be known amongst my Teleri people for more than the works of my hands. Nor did the coiling carvings – cold-drakes striving with mailèd Elves, their shields prepared before them, Quendi ensnared in wrought bands of cunning-craft, even one, a Noldor of grim stature, hung from a precipice, caught up by a thong stern about his thewy wrist – leave my heart unmoved. For here was revelation in craft, making my fingers itch for my wood-working tools, to fashion their like.

* * *

He came to my forge, as I knew he would, Finwë's warlike son. I was building a kiln, a tall skep of mortared limestone, for the smelting of iron. I will give him this – he at least had the courtesy to allow me a fortnight's grace after I buried Nîn to set my house in order, before he arrived at my hearth, a long straight arming-sword buckled and belted by his side, his brow crowned round with a conical helm with a nose-piece and a plume of black horse-hair.

I did not look up from my work. "Speak your piece, Noldo, and then be gone." Terse words, set to purpose. Yea, an Elf is master in his own house! But my eye fell musing upon my bronze ax, where she leaned, close to hand.

The Gonhirrim smouldered, like a dull dark coal. "You struck my sons, Curufin and Caranthir, _svartálfar_. Now your sword will give me answer! And you shall find it sterner work than shaming beardless boys!"

I looked up. "Challenge accepted, Curufinwë! A month hence to the day, between the branches. Now leave my house." For I had a sword to forge, and the iron was hot within my heart.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13: The Charcoal Burner**

Fire is hasty. Iron hungers. But neither bear the heat of a heart.

To make a sword of steel, you need iron and patience. To make iron, you need charcoal and time. To make charcoal, you need wood, and not just any wood – only hardwood will do, builded into great pyres, piled around posts in great hummocks, covered over in turves. Ash, and beech, oak and the silver birch. You delve a fire-shaft down into the very heart of the pyre – silver birch-bark, wood-shavings – and strike a blaze.

The fires burn hot and secret then for seven days – periodically the charcoal burner must needs pierce the reeking hill, to let air in. Then stop up the holes, to control the draught so that the whole does not go up in smoke and ash.

* * *

To make charcoal is to tarnish the silver of a soul. You must go away from others, for they will abide neither you nor your works. The pyre is your fane, which you must tend with a charcoal-burner's faith, as the rolling smoke thins and dwindles from grey to cerulean blue, and the heap slowly collapses in upon itself. You steep yourself in its reek – its grimy residue impregnates clothes, hair and skin. Oh, yes. I am Eöl, the Dark Elf.

To make charcoal is to reduce. It is insatiable, the flame. You feed trees into the blaze, and it is not enough, not nearly. You cannot do this thing with driftwood and deadfalls, no! You must fell. Oak and elm, beech and ash, tree after tree after tree, and you hardly know what it is you have done till you stand up from your task, knuckle the ache from your back, and see the stumps of mature trees, like grave markers.

You pace back, to gain perspective and see that you have felled a _whole ridge_.

I would never have done this thing were Nîn alive. But she is ashes and smoke. Let the trees fall!

* * *

I shoulder my axe, and am headed back from the pyre when I hear the deep woods heave, see bough and branch stir against the breeze, and a slanting of light and shade that goes against the grain as a shape separates itself from the forest. It only seems to sway and yearn with the wind when your eye is upon it, but it shifts between your glances, fast and jerky as a stick-figure walks in a flicker-book. It hastes and hates, and things are broken under its violent passage.

The glade has a voice now that is more than wind through leaf. It hooms and angers, and I am afraid. It is an Ent, Shepherd of the Forest, and I have roused it. They say, anger an Ent and pull the mountain down upon your head. A thing most difficult, deadly when accomplished!

He has no words, no tongue that we might share between us in which to craft peace. What words in any case could ever assuage the wrong I have done unto him? There is ache and pain in his voice – and a deep desire to see me dead and broken!

I flee, and he follows hard after. In the end it is only my massed pyres, their fume and heat and noise, that turn him back, that keep him from me. But he waits in the clearing beyond, crabbed and spreading like a poison oak, for the smoke to clear and my fires to fail me. Thorns clutching the air like talons as he abides, and roots and broods.

Enemies, yes. I know them well, as I ought. I fashioned most of them with these two hands.

A stand of living trees to lumber, to a few dozen sacks of charcoal, to make one sword. Dozens of _olvar_ lives, hundreds of years of yearning growth, cut short to fashion but one implement. A tool with one singular purpose. To murder another thinking being, a creature as I am.

No wonder the Ent hates me. This is evil. I am.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: The Forging**

To fashion a sword, you need iron sand, charcoal and time.

Ten tons of iron sand, twelve tons of charcoal, and many days labour gains you two tons of steel bloom, a spongy admixture of iron and slag, which will make you a ton of jewel steel, the steel of swords. Iron sand from the Iron Hills, from the very bed of the stream where Nîn died, watered with her blood. Charcoal, from a felled copse, and weeks of painstaking work. And hate. Hate is good here, if you can find it. It will drive you when love cannot.

First, you need a clay mold – as long as two men, and two cubits in height and depth, set and fired. In the bed, you layer charcoal, melled small – pine at first, soft, then wood of a denser grain. Let it burn over the course of three days, gradually adding iron sand and charcoal in layers, one atop the other.

Both the iron and the wood are consumed by the crucible's fires: only the hardy stuff remains, as it is with hearts.

* * *

When at last you are done, you break apart the mold – gently! A tap of a hammer. What you get is not one homogenous mass. The layering process has seen to that. It is stratified, like the firmament of the world itself, hoary in weary years. Each of the strata is needed to fashion a blade – the core steel, pliant iron, nearly pure in consistency for the sword's backbone and central rib; the hard steels of the tempered edge; pig iron and blacksteel, forge-welded and folded upon itself over and again.

You heat the hard steels, then quench. Cut and fold – first longitudinally, then transversely, sixteen times. Heat and hammer. More than a million individual layers, in all – two to the power sixteen. Between heatings, you must coat the steel in clay, water and straw-ash, else all you have done is for naught. The clay slip will make a flux coating the steel: it will draw forth the impurities from the iron as poison from a wound. Therein is the making of a steel which is both hard and ductile. It will not shatter, it will keep a keen edge, and it will kill – if you can.

I craft a blade in balance, ribbed, which broadens at the tang. A leaf-shaped blade, two-edged, which finesses to a cruel point. Two cubits in length, she is light and strong, hafted in white bone. I own myself satisfied. Sprung steel for the back and ribs, and the edge is as hard as hate, and as brittle as hoarfrost. And I smile, bright and cold as the light from far-distant stars. It is not the smile I saved for Nîn, but another.


End file.
